Liberty and the infosphere: affiliation over citizenship

Abstract

The title of my research report, Liberty and the Infosphere: Affiliation over Citizenship , speaks about an ideal of liberty, a maximal version, and then asks where such a version may be located, the proposition being that the infosphere, or more specifically, the internet offers such an environment. It then poses a supporting proposition in the form of the question: why we ought to a pursue a libertarian quest for freedom of affiliation online. This implies that we should affiliate with others, and that affiliation, as a collective-forming enterprise, is a better way of expressing liberty than that offered by the concept of citizenship. In pursuing this line of thought, I draw on a consequentialist frame of reference, arguing that liberty ought to guide us towards achieving the best results for both ourselves as well as others. This leads me further to propose a rule-consequentialist formulation of principles designed to maximise our experience of liberty by steering us through morally permissible actions and away from morally impermissible alternatives